The question is, how do you gain the skills to become a better sysadmin?

In my opinion, one of the best ways to gain experience quickly, is to participate in training classes, such as the amazing classes run by Red Hat.  But sometimes, those cost a ton of money, and the current company doesn’t want to foot the bill.  Of course, you are trying to save your pennies to get to there, but that can take time.

However, there are cheaper alternatives.  I believe the community is the best way overall to gain this knowledge. While it takes a bit more time to get there, over time, you can learn a major portion of what it takes to become a skilled sysadmin.

Local User Groups

I suggest attending a Local User Group that specializes in Linux administration.  These groups take one topic per month and can educate you (usually) for free.  I really enjoy my LUGs and have gained tons of knowledge over the years.

Conference Events

Many conferences, like SCaLE, offer space to communities to run day long activities.  The Fedora Activity Day at SCaLE is a good example of where you can quickly gain skills as a system administrator for a very low cost.  If you are looking to improve your system administration skillset, I highly recommend attending the FAD at SCaLE this year.

Sysadmin Study Group at SCaLE 9x

The study group is about helping you become a better system administrator and there will be experts on hand to help you study.  We will also be providing an installation server with Fedora 14, which will be used to build your virtual or physical machine and give you real hands on experience with the sysadmin tasks.

Machine Requirements

Register Today

I look forward to seeing you all come and improve your skills on Friday, and the entire cost is just what it takes to get into SCaLE, $70.  Register now!

While it seems something ahead of its time, much of what Matt is hoping to share is to help all kinds of business people understand what much of the open source community already knows.  A good image with your customers (aka community members) is of utmost importance.  The B4BConference looks to be intended to help business leaders understand this concept among other great tools of the trade.

Just think, Mr/Ms/Mrs business person, how cool would letting your customers know of a new product, service or when something has changed, almost instantaneously?  That’s what you can do with the a good blog post.  What you used to do by sending a press release or letters by mail/email, you can now do with another resource, the blog!

Either way, I am looking forward to helping out.  I’m also looking forward to sneaking into the former Lego directors presentation, and maybe the talk by Cydni Tetro of Next Page.

If you are interested in hearing about how to better improve your image, or just want to learn what benefits there are to blogging for your business, I’d take a minute and check out their site.

Cheers,

Herlo